Planning Your Online Activities for the Future

Now is the time to plan for the future. You need to make sure that you have a strategy in place so that you don’t have a gap in your work and in your progress going forward.

Putting a strategic plan in place

It is critical that you are as organized as you can possibly be when planning (or revising) your strategy to work in the future. When considering how you want do approach your online activities, you first need to reflect on what you did in the past so that you can identify what worked and what didn’t work. After you have established those concepts, you can devise your strategic plan so that  it will really yield amazing results that catapults you to the next level in your business.

Looking at your list of clients and prospective clients

An important part of your examining what you were able to accomplish in the past and how you can improve upon that, you will need to take a good, hard look at your clients and prospective clients. Just as you examined your online business strategy, you also need to examine your clients (who they are, what they do professionally, the quality of your relationship with them, whether your relationship is still mutually beneficial) and figure out if they are still worthy of being your clients. If any of them don’t “make the grade,” you should eliminate them as clients so that you are in a position of taking on new clients. Otherwise, you are wasting your valuable time and theirs. If you feel, for any reason, that you can no longer help your clients, you should cut them loose.

Identify the mistakes that you made in the past

It is critical to your business that you identify mistakes that you have made in the past so that you avoid making the same mistakes over again. You certainly want to avoid spinning your wheels. A good approach to this has to do with the way that you decide to take on specific clients. You should have a specific qualification process in place before you go after any new business. An effective starting point for you a list of questions that you customize to each prospective client. This will also work with existing clients who you feel you want to retain. Life and business is never stagnant. Something is always changing.  Your approach to your clients needs to keep up with the evolution. It is important to have a clear idea of everything that you wish to communicate to your clients and prospective clients, including pricing structure and your payment expectations of your clients, what you can offer, level of customer service, etc.

Establish your criteria for either continuing with existing clients or accepting new ones

It is very important for you to communicate clearly what you will and will not accept from your clients. This is very important before you start the year off. Everyone should have a solid idea of how your business dealings are going to go. Surprises are not a good thing in a business situation.

Make the most of your social media activities for your business

As sophisticated as you thought online technologies were in the past, they are going to be even more sophisticated now and in the future. It is critical to the success of your business that you make the most out of what is available to you and your business. Social media is a very powerful tool for business. Make sure that you educate yourself about all that it has to offer and use it appropriately and effectively. If you expect to rise above your competition, you will have to get very involved with social media for your business. If you are concerned about the cost, you needn’t be. Social media activities don’t necessarily have to cost must. Of course, you will need to commit to spending a certain amount of time and effort on your social media activities but you will see that the payback is well worth it. If you find that you are spending too much of your time on your social media activities and you really need to concentrate on other things, you can get someone else to manage the social media portion of your business. Please remember that the worst thing that you can do is to ignore social media entirely.

Build a content strategy

Content truly is king. If you don’t have top-quality, exciting, compelling and valuable content to share online, you won’t get anywhere. You have a responsibility to share fresh content on a regular basis. At least, if you have a desire to achieve greater and greater business success you do. Having old, static content just won’t do it for you. People are definitely going to pay attention to your online presence. You need to make sure that they are not disappointed by what they find. You strategy should include:

• Frequent blogging
• Frequent article publication and syndication
• Larger publication offerings (white paper, Ebook, newsletter)
• Strong marketing strategy
• Consistent and frequent updates to your website
• Content curation
• Content recycling
• Search engine optimization
• Social sharing  of your content
• Multimedia content

Conclusion

With the future right around the corner, it is very important for you to have everything aligned and in order before you do anything. You certainly have all of the tools to make your business a raging success. Now, all you have to do is follow your business plan and your online marketing strategy. It will serve your business well and you will enjoy tremendous success. Think about all that you want to accomplish and go after it.

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